Josie Tucker Mysteries Box Set 2

by E M Kaplan

  Josie peered through the windshield, leaning forward in her seat, her curiosity ramping up. Lizzie knew where they were going, but she was using her phone’s GPS nonetheless. Out here in the twisting turns and hidden hills by the lake and the gnarled, thick trees, they needed all the help they could get.

  “Is this it?” Josie asked, looking out the window at the nothingness of scrub brush and silhouettes, then back at the bright screen of Lizzie’s phone with her real-time map app.

  “Should be right here—oh, there it is.” Lizzie steered them around the last blind corner.

  “Holy crap.”

  #

  The spit dried up in Josie’s mouth. She had to wait for it to come back before she could ask, “What…price range did your cousin say this house is?”

  Rising up behind the last sloped turn of the smooth, paved drive, the house’s two-story multicolored peach and cream stone stood out against the velvety blue night sky thanks to dramatic landscape lights. Part Italianate and part modern with geometric picture windows—Josie didn’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t symmetrical, but it seemed totally balanced, the wings of the house rising together in a fulcrum of a round…thing—rotunda?—in the center. She was no architecture expert. All she could say with certainty was that it was gorgeous and took her breath away. However, the full impact of breaking and entering a mansion hadn’t sunk in until that very moment.

  “I dunno. Maybe about seven million,” Lizzie said. “It’s like eleven thousand square feet, my cousin said. I think there’s a tennis court and a zero horizon pool out back.”

  Josie gulped. Well, that explained it. Grandeur wasn’t cheap. Would her prison sentence be more for breaking into a place like this? She was in awe, and not enough to stop the quaking that arced through her stomach. She couldn’t imagine living here. Not that she would know what to do with all of this space other than get all of her friends to live with her and maybe adopt about 23 dogs. And a pygmy goat or two. How could two people, just Billy and Mary Clare, have lived in a place like this by themselves?

  Lizzie steered up the circular drive, past a multi-tiered fountain, and parked close to the front door, which in and of itself was intimidating. Eight feet tall, double doors with the windows to either side, glass from top down to about waist-high, covered with ornate wrought iron work with stars in the middle. Very Texan, very majestic. Bubba Royale, she wanted to call it. Pardner Palatial or Regal Rancherio. Her spike of misgiving was making her slap-happy.

  “We’re going through the front?” Josie had expected something more…covert, more dark of night, more ninja. Yeah, she was a little disappointed. And also, they were sitting ducks for any rent-a-cop the ritzy neighborhood might have prowling these exclusive, twisty streets.

  “Yeah.” Lizzie pointed a dark fingernail at the wooden front door. “It has a lockbox and my cousin gave me the combo.”

  Sure enough, when Josie peered through her window, she saw the right side of the majestic double door had a mundane-looking, beige plastic realtor’s box hanging from the handle. She didn’t feel it warranted mentioning to Lizzie, but all Josie needed was a super flat little piece of metal and she could get them into the lockbox in just a couple minutes thanks to a tutorial from her friend of many shady talents, Tiffany, she’d just met a couple months ago.

  They climbed out of the SUV, and Lizzie popped the trunk hatch open. Josie met her around the back and watched her dig through the bags, selecting and discarding item after item, tossing them into a shoulder bag. Minutes went by, and Josie’s self-doubt escalated.

  “Uh…I didn’t bring anything.” She’d barely remembered to pocket her cell phone before hopping in Lizzie’s SUV. Girl Scout, she was not. She’d been a more likely candidate for juvenile offender of the week. Sadly, that didn’t make her any more prepared for this potential felony trespassing.

  “I got you covered.” Lizzie unzipped her tote bag to show Josie a variety of gadgets. “EMF detector. That’s for electromagnetic fields. EVP recorder for Electronic Voice Phenomena. It records in multiple digital formats, but we all think WAV format is better that MP3. It’s crisper and picks up more things from other planes. Extra batteries. Flashlight. Thermometer for cold spots. And a red light so we have better night vision.”

  “Aha,” Josie said, although there was very little comprehension in her exclamation. She hoped she at least sounded less skeptical than before. Maybe even supportive of Lizzie’s efforts. After all, without her, Josie wouldn’t be about to trespass onto her number one suspect’s property.

  Standing outside the very ritzy mansion, nay, castle—her mental Lady Macbeth reference earlier had been more apt than she’d known—in the dark with a person of unknown good judgment whom she’d just met for the first time briefly this same week, Josie questioned her own sanity yet again. How many times could one reasonably doubt oneself in the space of an hour?

  Why am I here if I don’t believe in ghosts?

  Because I want to see if Mary Clare is up in his attic like Norman Bates’s mummified mother, sitting in her rocking chair, swaddled in a flag of Texas and preserved with AquaNet.

  She put her hands on her hips and paced a few steps, the top of her head tingling the way it always did when she was about to do something stupid.

  There’s still time to back out. Or at least say I’ll wait in the car.

  But that was ridiculous. She wasn’t in this weird position because of luck or happenstance. She had chosen the various forks in the road that had led her to this single situation, this unique point in time. Josie was the one who’d ask Lizzie to come on this wild ghost chase in the first place. In for a penny, as her Aunt Ruth always said.

  Josie cracked her knuckles and shook out her wrists, jangling the black beaded bracelet she’d bought the other day. Her finger brushed the coin embedded in the center. No time to have second thoughts now, except maybe she could just…

  “Awww yeah, look who remembered the combo on the first try, girl. We’re in like flint,” Lizzie said, swinging the door open.

  Josie took a deep breath and jogged up the steps, the bottoms of her Converse low-tops slapping the stones. She stepped over the threshold, trailing Lizzie into the house.

  “You mean, in like Flynn—whoa, check out those stairs. Robin Hood definitely could’ve had a sword fight on those.”

  Inside the massive foyer, a staircase spiraled upward, following along the exterior wall and then disappearing up into the darkness. The stairs swirled around, emphasizing the grandeur and sweep of the rounded…turret? Dome? Once again, she was stumped for the right word. Big, huge, impressive rounded roof thingy that went up really high.

  Though the foyer was blanketed in darkness, she could still see a lot of detail in the wrought iron railing on the staircase, the rustic dark-wood window frames, and the contrast of what looked like a fluffy white area rug in the center of the dark stone floor in the entryway. She made a note to avoid stepping on the carpet. As plush as it looked—good enough to drag in front of a TV and collapse into a Netflix stupor—every bit of dust on her Chucks would be sucked into its fibers. She’d probably leave a trail of dirt across it, like that messy Pig Pen kid from Charlie Brown.

  Speaking of TV, Josie had watched her fair share of black and white movies and reruns, so she was familiar with the old saying. Errol Flynn, the swashbuckling actor who had played Robin Hood, had been slick, or “in,” with both the ladies and gentlemen during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She was no Remington Steele, but she knew some fairly useless trivia.

  “In like flint, dummy,” Lizzie said. “Flint is sharp and makes fires. It’s a hard, crystalline form of mineral quartz. It was used for early tools because you could split it into sharp layers, like knife blades. Like, so you could cut into things. But if you strike it against something like steel, it makes a spark. It actually got replaced by a man-made substance. So when campers are making campfires, that’s not really flint they’re using anymore.”

  Their vo
ices echoed in the entryway, seeming to spiral upward into the darkness much like the stairs. Josie lowered her voice to a whisper.

  “But the saying is ‘in like Flynn.’”

  “No way.” Lizzie pointed to her chest with a dark purple nail. “Geology major, remember? Flint. Why would it be ‘in like a flin?’ That makes no sense. What’s a ‘flin–?’ Like, a fin on a fish?”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with rocks and minerals. Flynn was—”

  Somewhere deep inside the house, glass shattered.

  Chapter 23

  “I thought you said no one was supposed to be here,” Josie hissed, acutely aware that they themselves were also not supposed to be in the house. Dual urges battled inside her—one to sprint out the front door, the other to find the closest light switch and slap it on. Though they hadn’t been here for long, the dark was getting on her nerves. Big time.

  “Shhhh,” Lizzie said, batting the air in Josie’s general direction. For being a semi-seasoned ghost hunter, Lizzie looked unnerved. Her eyes had gone wide enough that Josie could see the whites of them in the shadowy darkness where they still stood.

  “Okay,” Josie said and Lizzie hushed her again, frozen and listening for more sounds. At least, that’s what Josie figured, but Lizzie had gripped her arm and her nails were poking into the meaty part of Josie’s left biceps—ow—so she didn’t ask.

  Josie waited. She assumed Lizzie would want to dig out some of her ghost detection equipment. For her own part, she assumed a broken window or whatever had gotten damaged meant there were other living bodies in the house. And people doing things in the dark were rarely up to any good. Including them.

  Lizzie stood frozen and didn’t seem inclined to start gathering data in any way.

  “Aren’t you going to investigate? Don’t you want to get out your…gadget…thingy?” Josie whispered. She made a vague hand gesture approximating the size of the handheld device she’d seen earlier in Lizzie’s bag.

  “I’ve never encountered an actual spirit before.” Lizzie’s voice was more of a squeak.

  “What? Never? But you said—”

  Lizzie shook her head.

  “What was all that talk about the powder? You said you’ve captured footprints in baby powder.” To demonstrate, Josie shuffled her foot on the gorgeous floor. Dark slate? Man, it was pretty. “Was all that footprint talk a fib?”

  “Noooo,” Lizzie said—whispered—in that tone of voice Josie always used when she herself was fibbing. “I mean, theoretically, I have captured footprints in baby powder.”

  “What do you mean ‘theoretically?’ How would that work on a non-actual level?”

  “Well, you know, we have practicums.”

  Josie blinked. “What…never mind.” She took Lizzie’s bag from her shoulder and dug around in it. She pulled out the little handheld thing with all the buttons and lights, then tossed it back in. Digging around some more, she found the red flashlight. She handed the bag back to Lizzie. Far be it from her to let the girl blow her first chance at experiencing the real thing. Not that Josie believed there was a ghost in the house. She just didn’t want Lizzie to be disappointed in herself later. Josie believed in fostering the youth and encouraging their budding interests. At least for the kids who weren’t total idiots.

  I can be a sarcastic jerk at times, but geeze, I’m not completely heartless.

  With the weird, cavernous setup of the house, it was hard to tell where the sound of breaking glass had come from. Echoes sent the smallest noises up into the domed ceiling and back down again. It seemed unlikely that someone would have broken an upstairs window…unless it was a really big bat. Not a cute little cartoon bat like she’d seen all over tourist t-shirts downtown, but a big-ass Dracula sized. Josie shook her head to clear the creepy thoughts making her heart pound.

  Yes, she was having panic attacks these days, so she might as well control the dumber, conscious thoughts she knew could scare her. None of the tourist brochures had mentioned the downside to bats. Surely they would have mentioned bloodsucking vampires had they been spotted as well.

  “Downstairs it is,” she muttered. She clicked on the flashlight, bathing their path in a blood-red light, and gestured for Lizzie to follow.

  They followed an offshoot of the curved wall that led to the back of the house, which opened up to a massive sitting room and an open kitchen and bar area. Slouchy brown leather couches. Wood everywhere, including the walls. Antlers. Texas stars. Cow hides. Antique rifles mounted over the stone fireplaces, of which there were two, fully stocked with chopped wood. A massive stuffed owl glared at them from a sideboard. The room was a decorating style Josie would categorize as Early-Modern Bubba with a Taxidermist Influence. The red beam of the flashlight painting the room made it all that much more ghoulish.

  Josie stepped into the room, Lizzie so close on her heels she could feel the girl’s breath on the back of her hair, which was as comforting as it was encroaching on her personal space. At least no one could sneak up behind her with a knife or a shovel or…an expected bout of PTSD. In fact, Josie hadn’t even had a quake of her nerves with Lizzie around.

  Hmm. Maybe I could hire the kid full-time. Would probably be cheaper than therapy. Though more of a stop-gap Band-Aid than a permanent cure.

  She walked the room’s perimeter, checking first for broken windows, but she didn’t find any. A collection of three chunky crystal liquor decanters lined a table by a winged-back chair, but none of them were broken. In fact, they looked so heavy that if any of them hit the floor, they’d probably gouge the wood rather than shatter.

  Using the hem of her t-shirt so she wouldn’t leave any trace of herself, she lifted the stopper off one of the bottles and sniffed. She wrinkled her nose. Bourbon. Gross, but not vinegar yet or whatever happened when booze turned bad. She flicked her light across the top of the nearest side table, did a double-take, and shined the light over it again. No dust. In the adjacent kitchen, the refrigerator hummed.

  Someone was staying here. The house showed all the signs of upkeep and habitation. If Billy Blake was living at his restaurant, who was living here at the house?

  #

  “Over there,” Lizzie said, prodding Josie’s shoulder blade and pointing in the direction of the kitchen. “I see a doorway on the other side.”

  Josie massaged her shoulder where Lizzie’s nails had poked her. Sure enough, when she squinted, she could make out just the very vaguest shape of a door opposite the fridge. How Lizzie could see anything in this darkened part of the house was beyond Josie. Maybe she’d learned how to in one of her practicums. How to Sharpen Your Night Vision for Burglaries 101 and Eating Carrots for The Serious Nighttime Hobbyist.

  In the meantime, Lizzie had regained her composure and dug the ghost-detecting machines out of her bag. In one hand, she held her thermometer. In the other, she wielded the one with the lights and…antenna? Were ghosts broadcasting on a specific frequency? Or maybe they were beaming messages directly into people’s minds.

  What’s the frequency, Lizzie?

  As they scooted through the kitchen across the slick marble floor, Josie stopped them long enough to peek into the stainless steel fridge, again using the hem of her shirt to open the door. If she kept up this B&E gig for real, she was going to have to invest in a pair of burglar gloves. Or maybe a pack of disposables. She wasn’t sure which of those options would look more suspicious if found later in her possession.

  The light from inside the stainless steel side-by-side nearly blinded her. As she yanked her head back squinting, she bumped into Lizzie, who also stepped back. In front of them, shelf after gleaming shelf stood empty except for just a few sparse items. The beauty of the unfilled refrigerator left her seriously jonesing to fill it with kitchen staples and basic ingredients. A squirt tube of minced garlic. A beef roast aging in the back corner. Numerous jars of pesto and pickles that no one but her would ever eat… Okay, maybe that was just her vision.

  But great J
ulia Child in heaven, what would it be like to come home to an appliance—a whole kitchen—like this every day?

  “You want a yogurt?” Lizzie asked, looking over her shoulder. “It’s organic. And locally sourced.”

  She looked at the rest of the fridge’s contents. Greek yogurt, hummus, mozzarella cheese sticks, natural peanut butter, and a screw top bottle of fruity red sangria. What the heck?

  “I hate hummus,” Lizzie said with a shudder. “It’s disgusting. If you want me to eat garbanzo beans, just say it to my face. Don’t try to trick me. I don’t need that kind of two-faced, toxic relationship in my life.”

  Josie frowned over her shoulder. “Don’t eat store-bought hummus. Make it yourself. It’s totally different, like night and day. And I thought we were being quiet.”

  “Any ghost that’s here already knows we’re here now. We’re not exactly subtle infiltrators.” Ninjas, they were not. A squadron of senior citizen cloggers was closer to the truth.

  “It’s not the ghosts I’m worried about.”

  In her experience, people could be the worst. Like, murdering, violent monsters. So until she met a ghost, she was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  Josie shut the fridge and had to wait a few seconds for her eyes to readjust to the near-dark, bathed in blood, thanks to the stupid ghost light. She passed through the kitchen and reached for the handle on the door Lizzie had pointed out.

  “No broken glass in here. It’s a pantry,” she said.

  And an empty one at that. Too bad. It was more spacious than her closet at home—almost bigger than her entire bedroom back in Boston. She took a few seconds to indulge in an almost pornographic foodie fantasy about the white wood shelves of the storage area being fully stocked with dry goods, gourmet pickles, and a 50-gallon tub of spicy brown mustard. Heck, why not? The pantry had room for more than one trip to the food warehouse store. She could even get a gallon of sun-dried tomatoes to go with it. Or 20 pounds of dried apricots. With a storage space like this, nothing could stop her…except an empty wallet and someone else pointing out her idiocy.